The present disclosure relates generally to computers and software code for controlling access to a computer memory device, and, more specifically, to a system and method for dynamically changing the mapping of partitions of the disk to a logical drive of the operating system code.
The main storage area for most computers is typically distributed between one or more storage devices, such as a hard disk. Furthermore, each storage is often separated into one or more partitions so that certain data or programs can be separately stored. For example, in a computer that utilizes DOS and/or WINDOWS 95 operating systems, as provided by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., a single computer hard drive may be partitioned into a "primary" partitions, and one "extended" partition, such as is described in Table 1, below. Continuing the example of Table 1, the operating system references the primary partition as a "logical" C: drive and the extended partition is further subdivided into two logical drives, each of which will have a separate drive letter D: and E:. In general, only one primary partition can be "active" (e.g., visible to the operating system) at a time.
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ Partition Logical Drive ______________________________________ First Primary C: First Extended D: Second Extended E: ______________________________________
There are several common situations in which partitions are created, or defined. One such situation is when a user is adding and preparing a new hard drive to a computer. When preparing the new hard drive, the user will initialize the hard drive into one or more partitions. Another situation is when a user wants to re-partition his existing hard drive using a utility program such as PARTITION MAGIC from PowerQuest Corporation of Orem, Utah. Once the hard drive has been partitioned or re-partitioned, the computer must then be rebooted so that the operating system has an updated version of the partition(s) in its reference tables. However, such reboots take a large amount of time and resources. This is especially problematic when the user is a manufacturer of new computers, who must perform a reboot on every new computer. Furthermore, reboots lose or reconfigure certain aspects of the computer that the user may want to retain.